A digital display company in Rancho Cordova is on track to double its sales this year, and recently completed a high-profile project -- a redesign of the sign at ABC's Times Square Studios in New York City.

To accommodate its fast-paced growth, D3 LED LLC last month leased another 10,000 square feet. The company started in January 2006 in a 7,500-square-foot building.

D3, which stands for Dynamic Digital Displays, did close to $4 million in revenue in 2006 and about $9 million last year.

George Pappas, one of three founding partners, said D3 is on track for between $20 million and $25 million in sales this year. "We have approximately 50 percent of that in sales and backlogs right now," he said.

The company's two biggest jobs -- each about $3 million and in Times Square -- are the ABC display and a sign for M&M World, a mega-store specializing in M&M's candy. With the redesign of the ABC sign, its resolution is five times greater than the original display.

The 3,200-square-foot sign consists of nine light-emitting diode ribbons, and displays high-definition video, such as previews of ABC programs and commercials.

Louis Brill, a San Francisco-based consultant in electronic displays and media façades, said D3 has experience on its side.

"The people at D3 had a wealth of experience in the industry, so they were able to enter the industry with very strong resources, connections and opportunities," he said.

The market for LED signs and displays is strong, particularly as the price of LEDs decline, making such products more affordable, he said.

D3 makes the hardware and software for LED displays, and this year it plans to move more into the operational side of the business. D3's operational center in New Jersey, where customer displays are remotely changed and monitored, will become a 24-hour operation. Right now it's a one-person, 12-hour-a-day operation, Pappas said.

The company got its start on "spectacular" LED displays -- the large, multifaceted projects such as the ABC sign. Now, D3 is expanding into the billboard industry.

In October, D3 formed a joint venture with Action Graphix in Jonesboro, Ark. Action Graphix offers a "Tri-Action" sign that allows three images to rotate on long, triangular tubes. As digital signs have become more affordable, the traditional billboard has started to become obsolete, Pappas said.

"They needed the next-generation product," he said.

Unlike a static billboard, or even the Tri-Action billboard, digital billboards offer greater flexibility. Operators can display many more ads in the same time, run one-day or week-long ads, or change ads throughout the day.

Under the partnership, D3 builds the electronics and Action Graphix makes the frames for the billboards. The companies agreed on a profit split. Pappas declined to disclose the details.

Two of D3's three founders, Pappas and Jason Barak, worked at LED display manufacturer Multimedia LED Inc. of Rancho Cordova when, in May 2004, that company was bought by BillBoard Video Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

"We worked for the new owner about a year," said Pappas, who was Multimedia's vice president of manufacturing. "We weren't pleased with the direction of the company. We could see it would be sold again. We decided at that time to leave and start our own company."

Today, Multimedia is owned by Craig Realty Group, which bought BillBoard in 2005. Multimedia was among the companies that competed for the ABC sign redesign in Times Square.

Multimedia was responsible for manufacturing the previous LED sign for ABC in Times Square. About half of D3's 30 employees have come from Multimedia, Pappas said.

In 2004, Multimedia had 65 employees and $30 million in revenue. The company now employs about 40, said Daniel Wheeler, Multimedia's director of marketing. He declined to disclose the company's revenue.

Wheeler said D3 has "pulled some good-size displays," but he said in the next few months Multimedia will unveil three prototypes that will be different from what's on the market now.

According to a recent report by market research firm The Carmel Group in Carmel, digital signage is expected to reach more than $2.5 billion in revenue by the end of 2010.

There are about 500,000 flat-panel screens nationwide for digital signs, said Jimmy Schaeffler, a senior research analyst at The Carmel Group. That number is going to increase significantly, with millions of screens in the next two to five years, he said.